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Russia
Russia

Facing Demographic Woes, Russia Struggles To Lure Ex-Pats Home

A program started in 2006 offers benefits to lure back home the Russians who left as the Soviet Union was crumbling. But the price to get the top qualified emigres to return is apparently more than Moscow can afford.

Russian signs on a pharmacy in Brooklyn, NY (Violette79)
Russian signs on a pharmacy in Brooklyn, NY (Violette79)
RussiaSourcesSocietyKOMMERSANTCountries

*NEWSBITES

MOSCOW – Over the past two decades, Russia has been hit by a demographic double whammy: an overall burst of emigration that accompanied the collapse of the Soviet Union, as well as a more recent and concentrated brain drain that has sapped the country of some of its best qualified students and highly skilled workers who have left to seek opportunities abroad.

Desperate to get back some of this human power back home, Moscow put in place a government program five years ago that was specifically aimed to lure expatriates back to Russia. The state would pay for transportation, offer an installation grant and guarantee jobs and housing if emigres came back to the motherland.

But, as the Migration Ministry has recently found out, a free plane ticket and a bit of startup cash has not managed to convince many Russian ex-pats to return.

Expected to attract 300,000 returnees per year, the program has had just 61,000 adherents since beginning in 2006. The majority of them come from former Soviet republics, such as Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Ukraine, although a government spokesperson insisted that the program has attracted participants from farther-flung countries, like the United States and Bolivia.

Russia's population did stop declining in 2009, but the resettlement program still does not offset the Russians who emigrate every year. In 2010, a total of 29,900 people gave up their Russian citizenship after emigrating, and while there are no specific statistics on the number of Russians who emigrate without giving up their citizenship, migration experts say the number is between 100,000 and 150,000 per year.

Part of the problem, say experts, is that the program only makes sense for people who left as refugees, and for those who were already set to return to Russia. Of course, and unfortunately for Russia, very few of the returning emigrants are the highly-qualified individuals that everyone wants to attract.

Read the full article in Russian by Andrei Kozenko

Photo - Violette79

*Newsbites are digest items, not direct translations

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KOMMERSANT
Kommersant ("The Businessman") was founded in 1989 as the first business newspaper in the Russia. Originally a weekly, Kommersant is now a daily newspaper with strong political and business coverage. It has been owned since 2006 by Alisher Usmanov, the director of a subsidiary of Gazprom.
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Green
nature

Forest Networks? Revisiting The Science Of Trees And Funghi "Reaching Out"

A compelling story about how forest fungal networks communicate has garnered much public interest. Is any of it true?

Thomas Brail films the roots of a cut tree with his smartphone.

Arborist and conservationist Thomas Brail at a clearcutting near his hometown of Mazamet in the Tarn, France.

Alain Pitton / ZUMA
GreenSourcesUNDARK
Melanie Jones, Jason Hoeksema, & Justine Karst

Over the past few years, a fascinating narrative about forests and fungi has captured the public imagination. It holds that the roots of neighboring trees can be connected by fungal filaments, forming massive underground networks that can span entire forests — a so-called wood-wide web. Through this web, the story goes, trees share carbon, water, and other nutrients, and even send chemical warnings of dangers such as insect attacks. The narrative — recounted in books, podcasts, TV series, documentaries, and news articles — has prompted some experts to rethink not only forest management but the relationships between self-interest and altruism in human society.

But is any of it true?

The three of us have studied forest fungi for our whole careers, and even we were surprised by some of the more extraordinary claims surfacing in the media about the wood-wide web. Thinking we had missed something, we thoroughly reviewed 26 field studies, including several of our own, that looked at the role fungal networks play in resource transfer in forests. What we found shows how easily confirmation bias, unchecked claims, and credulous news reporting can, over time, distort research findings beyond recognition. It should serve as a cautionary tale for scientists and journalists alike.

First, let’s be clear: Fungi do grow inside and on tree roots, forming a symbiosis called a mycorrhiza, or fungus-root. Mycorrhizae are essential for the normal growth of trees. Among other things, the fungi can take up from the soil, and transfer to the tree, nutrients that roots could not otherwise access. In return, fungi receive from the roots sugars they need to grow.

As fungal filaments spread out through forest soil, they will often, at least temporarily, physically connect the roots of two neighboring trees. The resulting system of interconnected tree roots is called a common mycorrhizal network, or CMN.

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